Galaxy Express 999

I saw this as a child in the late eighties and I must say, Galaxy Express is one of those films that sticks in your imagination for a long time. If you've never understood the appeal of anime, discovering this film may be your golden ticket to Otaku-town.

The story is as delicate and poetic as Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. The cell animation, while somewhat traditional, possesses a vivid style that explosively portrays Leiji Matsumoto's great talent for character design and visual storytelling.

This is one of those unique children's films like Star Wars, The Dark Crystal and The Wizard of Oz that completely transcends 'family entertainment' status and stands as a classic of cinema on its own terms.

I highly recommend this film.

Fans of Matsumoto probably know him best from either his original mangas, or the mostly made-for-TV adaptations like "Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers" and "Captain Harlock." The man definitely had his own little enterprise there, with his own vision and style; for a while in the '70s he was arguable THE star creator of anime & manga (like Osama Tezuka before him, and Hayao Miyazaki after). I've never seen his stories in their original episodic TV form, just the impressive and emotional but maddeningly fragmented movie version of "Yamato" (edited down from an entire TV series into roughly two-odd hours). There is no such problem with "Galaxy Express 999," a feature film from 1979.

Besides a cohesive storyline--involving scrappy young Tetsuro Hoshino taking a trip on the eponymous spacegoing locomotive along with enigmatic lady-in black Maetel, and kicking some major mechanical butt along the way for his dead mother--the movie has all the trademarks of Matsumoto at his best: wonderfully slinky old-school character designs, fanciful details and settings, a stylized, distinctly "vintage-futuristic" flavor (rather than the grungy postmodern cyberpunk variety made popular by "Blade Runner" and, in anime, "Bubblegum Crisis"); Matsumoto's obsession with vintage terrestrial vehicles streaking through space (the 999 is an old-fashioned steam locomotive-turned-spaceship, the Yamato is a resurrected WWII Japanese battleship-turned spaceship...one wonders if Leiji ever considered a "Galactic Land-Yacht Edsel"); even Leijiverse regulars Captain Harlock, one of the coolest anime characters ever, and Queen Emeralda figure into the story. A scene where the good Captain forces a belligerent android to down a bottle of rust-inducing milk is a classic--I can hear Japanese movie audiences cheering.

Above everything else, "Galaxy Express 999" offers a kind of poetry in the imagery and the story, and an enormous reserve of humanity and unadulterated drama, that touches on very deeply embedded emotional buttons. Like the Yamato movies, I find myself feeling close to tears in several places. This is no empty thrill-ride anime where the mecha are the stars, but a bona-fide sci-fi drama featuring effectively "real people" with real concerns and intense feelings that radiate directly out to you--what the best anime are all about. See this one, definitely. The style (including that endearing '70s-rock end theme) may strike some younger otaku as quaint or even hard to deal with, but those who stay on the Galaxy Express 999 to the end of the line will be glad they did, experiencing a true anime classic, from a master of the genre, that has survived the test of time.

This movie inspired my IMDB name, Meteru. This, for some reason, appealed to me. Every 3 years, I see an anime that I'm really, really mad about, and this time it's GE999. Be forewarned- this film is very seventies. Bellbottoms are involved. There is scruffy, just-at-the-nape-of-your-neck-but-not-long-enough-to-be-cool hair. Some of the voice acting in the English version is really corny, albeit Saffron Henderson makes a good little boy. And some people interpret this to be a "children's" movie. Ladies and germs, this is not a children's movie. It isn't exactly "Orgasm in Demon City", as there is no nudity nor blood and guts. Some ignorant fools believe blood, guts and boobies are essential ingredients to Japanese animation. Go fig. Instead, this is a beautiful animation about a space-going train called the 999. Passengers are promised mechanical bodies that are practically immortal.Pain is deadened, but so is pleasure and purpose.

And it's all up to young Tetsuro Hoshino to stop it. And he has to grow up, too. It has beauty, soul and a mind of its own, and that's more than most of us could say about the crap that's shoved down our throats these days. The End.

this movie is a classic of the genre. deals with innocense lost, the idolization of parental figures, the journey myth. everyone in the movie, even the secondary characters, has an agenda and a complexity lacking most american live-action movies, let alone the animated ones.

one of the best things about this movie is its use of iconographic imagery, the trains, the pirate ships. in the future where bodies can be replaced by machines without trouble, why not have trains and pirate ships. their allagoric status is made more powerful by their total out-of-place-edness within an outer space environment.

what's more, their importance to the characters becomes clear. in a world where the loss of body can lead to the callousness displayed by the "evil" characters, and their eventual loss of inner humanity, icons of what it means to be human become that much more important. each character in this movie is ultimately looking for that which makes them who they are. the landmarks of their collective pasts as the human race are important.

the best anime, in my humble opinion, is that which asks those questions because it is in the peculiar position of being able to explore it in fantastic ways. GE999 works well along those lines.

*drops $.02 in jar*

The animation isn't great, but it does have a certain charm. The design of the new world which is based on a very old one is striking. The story is intriguing, as it stars a little boy on a quest to avenge the death of his mother. During his journey he acts like a snotty little brat, but in the process helps a lot of people and they in turn help him.

The film is very long at over two hours and after half of it is gone, it seems as if the story is going to end soon, but it doesn't, it unfolds into different layers. However it remains fundamentally simplistic, abstracted in a way that it seems at the same time both naive and deep.

Common themes can be found in the plot, like the child avenging his mother, innocent love, machines that dehumanize, humans that do everything for their souls and so on, but each substory shows a different aspect of humanity so that in their simplicity, they all gather together to form a deeper meaning.

Bottom line: I don't regret seeing it. It is certainly a beauty for its time and it has an interesting story. I even recommend watching it.